For soprano Leah Crocetto, coming home to sing with the Adrian Symphony Orchestra again is an especially personal thing this time around.

That’s because one of the pieces she will perform, Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” is as much about her own childhood in Palmyra as it was, for writer James Agee, from whom Barber took the text, about his own younger days in Tennessee.

“I remember being in front of my home on Grosvenor on one of those perfect Michigan evenings,” playing with her siblings, Crocetto said. “It’s exactly what Agee was talking about.”

The Barber work is part of a season-opening ASO concert at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 27 — a change from the originally announced date, due to a scheduling issue for Crocetto — that also includes Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin,” Canteloube’s “Songs from the Auvergne” and a contemporary work by the Grammy-nominated composer Christopher Theofanidis, “Visions and Miracles.”

The concert is at Dawson Auditorium on the Adrian College campus. Tickets are $29, $26 and $18 for adults; $27, $24 and $18 for senior citizens; and $15 and $12 for students, depending on seating location.

At 7 p.m. Friday, ASO Music Director John Thomas Dodson will host a free Classical Conversation to discuss the evening’s music. A complimentary reception follows the performance.

Concert tickets are available by calling the ASO at 264-3121, online at www.adriansymphony.org, or at the door.

The ASO will also hold an open rehearsal this week to give people an inside look at how a concert comes together. Interested patrons can call the ASO for more details and to reserve a spot.

In her musical career, Crocetto has steadily established herself as one of the operatic world’s best young voices. She sings across the country and at venues around the world ranging from Germany to Paris to Japan.

The next few months alone take her from Adrian to Louisville, Ky., for a recital two days later, and then to San Francisco; Bordeaux, France; Davis, Calif.; Washington, D.C.; and Frankfurt, Germany. And next season, she makes her Metropolitan Opera debut.

“I’m reaching my pinnacle, so it’s exciting,” she said.

She enjoys all the international performing she does, with the opportunity it gives her to immerse herself in local culture.

“I rent an apartment and have a good time and get involved in the local scene,” she said.

“And I’m a big history buff. Every time I go to Europe, I’m surrounded by history, and that’s amazing.”

Page 2 of 2 - She does all this globetrotting with her little Maltese, Ernie, who “travels pretty well now,” she said. “He just sits in his little bag by my feet (during the flights) and goes to sleep.”

Still, she admits, having an international career is not all it’s cracked up to be. “Everyone says, ‘Your life is so glamorous because you’re in all these cities, ” she said. “Well, I’m working!”

It’s certainly not a life for someone who wants to be more settled.

“But I’m a pretty adaptable person, and it’s served me well,” she said. “I can’t sit still for too long.”

Friday’s concert is not the first time she has returned to perform in her hometown. But the previous concerts have been pops performances. “Pops concerts are fun, but this (classical music) is what I do,” she said.

And she’s looking forward to singing both the Canteloube and the Barber works. Canteloube’s “Songs from the Auvergne” is a set of folk-song settings, a couple of which are especially well known, and “if you’re a soprano, they’re staples (of the repertoire),” she said.

The songs are written in the Auvergne language, Occitan. Does that make them hard to sing? Yes and no, said Crocetto.

“Yes, because it’s a fairly unknown dialect, but no because languages come pretty easily to me, so it’s not an issue.”

As for the Barber work, “John (Dodson) knows I’ve always wanted to sing (it),” she said.

“I love the idea of doing it in my hometown, because it’s such a familial conversation with the audience. … I think it’s important to come back to your hometown as a performer, and this is a very poignant piece for me.”

Not only does it bring back those childhood memories of playing in front of her family home, but the text of the Agee work that Barber was using strikes other deep chords within her. For example, she sees her relationship with her late father mirrored in the piece.

“Agee had a very close relationship with his dad, and it’s very obviously in (Barber’s) music,” she said. Whenever Agee’s words are about his father, Barber’s notes are longer, more emotional, “and that’s the brilliance of Barber, that he knew that.”